The Himalayan massif quickly came into range. The barometric altimeter showed fifteen thousand feet, but the plane was only a thousand above the ground. Trained for this kind of flying, the pilots were relaxed in their seats as the sophisticated controls moved of their own accord. The Spirit followed the path mapped by its GPS and radar, rocketing through steep valleys, slewing around ramparts that towered ten thousand feet above the bat-winged plane. It was a ride on the ultimate roller coaster, one in which the car determined where to put the tracks it was to follow.
The plane ate the distance across Nepal in twenty minutes and was a dozen miles from the Chinese border when the computer detected the first antiaircraft radar. In minutes a CRT screen in the cockpit lit up with dozens of radar contacts. The coverage appeared solid, a veritable minefield stretching the length of the frontier and projecting fifty miles into the country. Added to this was the presence of microwave towers built intentionally to detect a stealth bomber penetration. The towers emitted an invisible barrier of energy that the plane would have to fly through.
The idea behind the barrage of microwaves wasn’t to find the plane directly but rather to detect the hole it created when it cut across the net, much the same as sonar operators focus on quiet spots in the otherwise noisy seas to find modern noiseless submarines. Detractors of the B-2 had called this low-tech solution reason enough to scrap the $2 billion planes.
The veteran pilot watched the terrain map unfolding on the screen in front of him, trying to guess their route before the computer found it. There were several radars in the H and E bands to their west and a powerful microwave tower directly ahead. The tower appeared to be on a mountaintop. The computer banked the bomber so it steered close to the tower but a thousand feet below it in a valley only five hundred feet wider than the plane’s 172-foot wingspan. The pilot would have made the same maneuvers, although his solution came seconds after the computer’s.
Jagged crags of granite seemed to reach for the plane as it plunged into the steep valley seconds before breaking the microwave beam. She hugged the canyon floor, flying low enough to blow snow off the ground. Once the threat board showed clear, the heavy bomber shot out of the gorge, passing directly over a sleepy little village.
“There’ll be a story or two down there come morning.”
“If they knew comic books they could tell the local commissar that they were buzzed by Batman.”
“They were.”
With their clear view out the cockpit and ample time to prepare, the violent maneuvers seemed routine for the flight team. In the bomb bay, it was quite different.
Mercer was certain his shoulders would be black and blue. The sudden jukes and jinks slammed him around inside the MMU, straining his safety harnesses with each furious bounce. And if it weren’t for an iron stomach, he would long ago have lost his lunch.
The wild ride went on for twenty minutes, with changes of direction, attitude and speed coming with dizzying regularity. The fact that the men were horizontal in the pods and couldn’t gain equilibrium made it all that much worse.
“This is the flight deck,” the pilot called after a moment of relatively level flight. “We just penetrated the heaviest concentration of SAM sites and radar installations anywhere on earth and as far as the Chinese know this bird’s sitting in a hangar in Missouri. We’ll be over the drop zone in ten minutes. This ship’s at her most vulnerable when the bomb bay doors open. To minimize the risk the rotary launcher’s gonna spit you out like watermelon seeds. If you think the past few minutes were rough, you ain’t seen nothing yet.”
For Mercer the waiting had become easier. He’d spent so much time worried about finding a way to save a planet full of people that it was almost a relief to only worry about saving one, Tisa. With that goal so close, his blood felt charged. The others were feeling it too. The bad jokes were beginning again.
“Five minutes to drop,” the pilot announced what seemed just seconds later.
“Okay, people,” Doc Sykes called out. “Tighten those straps, stow your relief and water tubes and button those flies. Once we’re on the ground, I want Dopey to rig the MMUs’ demolition charges with a four-hour delay. Sneezy’s his cover. The rest gather on me ASAP and we’ll make the assault on the wall. The two of you can catch up when you’re done. By then, Happy and Bashful will have finished their ascent and we’ll be ready for the climb. Turn on your external cameras and everyone give me a status report.”
By the time the Delta operators and Mercer told Doc they were ready, the pilot informed them the drop was in one minute.
Mercer’s sense of well-being evaporated. Facing a thirty-thousand-foot plunge in what amounted to a futuristic life-sized tin can, he knew that once the rotary launcher released the MMU his fate was out of his hands until the pod touched down. Sykes had said the first forty or so drops hadn’t been survivable. He’d later confided that a few of those that were survivable would have resulted in broken limbs, internal injuries, or worse. Mercer tried to recall his frame of mind when he’d blackmailed his way onto this mission and cursed the person he’d been then.
“Okay, boys, doors open in five, four, three, two, one.”
The hydraulic whine was drowned instantly by the screaming torrent of air that whipped into the large bomb bay. Mercer had only a second to sense the buffeting when the rotary launcher engaged. He couldn’t feel the other MMUs being jettisoned, but every two seconds the launcher advanced one slot and another was gone. After three quarter-rotations of the launcher it was his turn.
The mechanism spun to the lock position and the clamps holding Mercer’s MMU released.
The instant the monkey bomb was free of the Spirit it began a four-g deceleration that shoved Mercer’s internal organs toward his feet. Somewhere high above he felt his stomach calling for him to come back. Winglets deployed from the sides of the MMU to prevent the pod from tumbling as it transited into free fall. The drop was like a runaway elevator, only there seemed to be no bottom. Reaching its terminal velocity of one hundred twenty miles per hour, the stealthy MMU plummeted from the sky, unseen, unheard and completely undetectable. Clutched so tightly, one of the plastic handgrips on the side of Mercer’s body snapped off. He could barely force air into his lungs. At some point he became aware that he was screaming and probably had been since the MMU fell clear.
He remembered the television screen, but it showed nothing but blackness. He could only hope the GPS system was keeping the MMU on track, otherwise he’d have no chance of hitting the target and would likely crash into the side of a mountain.
“Come on,” he silently prayed. The chute should have deployed by now.
The designers had mistakenly not installed altitude displays for the soldiers inside the monkey bombs. He was sure he’d already passed the minimum safe distance above the ground and nothing was happening.
Jesus, the thing had malfunctioned.
What he didn’t know was that the MMU was working flawlessly, the stabilizing fins making constant adjustments to keep the weapon on target while the laser range finder knew to the inch how close it was to the ground.